Abstract Multi-effect desalination (MED) systems are highly promising for high salinity seawaters at large scales, and hence are used broadly in desalination plants. Despite the fact that the MED systems can be driven by various renewable or waste heat energies, many of the available renewable technologies are expensive in some parts of the globe. Hence, proposing and developing high-efficient mechanical-based MED units can be an encouraging alternative. In pursuance of this objective, two innovative mechanical-driven MED units are devised, simulated and the results are compared with those of the conventional MED-MVC (mechanical vapor compression) unit. For this aim, absorption-compression heat pump (ACHP) and vapor compression heat pump (VCHP) systems are used for integrating with the MED unit. Under a constant input power of 1845 kW it is found that proposing the MED-VCHP system instead of the conventional MED-MVC system improves gain-output-ratio (GOR), performance ratio (PR), freshwater rate, specific work consumption (SWC), exergy efficiency, exergy destruction rate, and exergy of loss by 1%, 12.86%, 12.64%, 11.45%, 10.78%, 3.3%, and 10.86% respectively. However, the unit cost of distilled water (UCDW) of the MED-VCHP system is around 6.7% higher than that of the MED-MVC system. Also, the MED-VCHP system uses less exergy of fuel than the MED-MVC system due to its high seawater exergy. Furthermore, it is found that one can decrease the overall exergy loss rate from 145.4 kW to 129.6 kW when the MED-VCHP system is used instead of the MED-MVC system.

中文翻译：

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通过热泵循环提高传统多效海水淡化 (MED) 系统的性能

摘要 多效海水淡化（MED）系统在大规模高盐度海水中具有很高的应用前景，因此被广泛应用于海水淡化厂。尽管 MED 系统可以由各种可再生能源或废热能驱动，但在全球某些地区，许多可用的可再生技术都很昂贵。因此，提出和开发基于机械的高效 MED 装置可能是一个令人鼓舞的选择。为了实现这一目标，设计并模拟了两个创新的机械驱动 MED 装置，并将结果与​​传统 MED-MVC（机械蒸汽压缩）装置的结果进行比较。为此，吸收压缩热泵 (ACHP) 和蒸汽压缩热泵 (VCHP) 系统用于与 MED 单元集成。在 1845 kW 的恒定输入功率下，发现提出 MED-VCHP 系统代替传统的 MED-MVC 系统提高了增益输出比（GOR）、性能比（PR）、淡水率、比功消耗（SWC） )，火用效率、火用破坏率和火用损失分别提高 1%、12.86%、12.64%、11.45%、10.78%、3.3% 和 10.86%。然而，MED-VCHP 系统的蒸馏水 (UCDW) 单位成本比 MED-MVC 系统高约 6.7%。此外，由于其较高的海水火用，MED-VCHP 系统比 MED-MVC 系统使用更少的燃料。此外，发现当使用 MED-VCHP 系统代替 MED-MVC 系统时，可以将总火用损失率从 145.4 kW 降低到 129.6 kW。